30 April, 2017

Media
mogul Agustin Edwards Eastman, who was widely regarded as the Rupert
Murdoch of Chile, died on April 24, at age 89, leaving a legacy of
close collaboration with Henry Kissinger and the CIA in instigating
and supporting the September 11, 1973, military coup. Edwards was
the only Chilean—civilian or military—known to meet face-to-face
with CIA Director Richard Helms in September 1970 in connection with
plans to instigate regime change against Socialist leader Salvador
Allende, who had just been elected president.

Declassified
CIA and White House documents posted today by the National Security
Archive at The George Washington University show conclusively what
Edwards repeatedly denied – that he and his newspaper, El Mercurio,
became a critical part of U.S. plans to foment a military coup
against President Allende.

National
Security Archive

Key
points:

Edwards’
extraordinary influence on U.S. policy and CIA intervention in Chile
did not stop there. When CIA covert action—which included the
assassination of Gen. Rene Schneider—failed to block Salvador
Allende’s inauguration, the Edwards media empire became the
leading clandestine collaborator in fomenting a military coup
d’etat. President Nixon personally authorized covert CIA funding
to sustain El Mercurio so that it could become a media megaphone of
opposition, agitation and misinformation against the Allende
government. In the aftermath of Allende’s overthrow, the CIA
explicitly credited its media propaganda project in Chile for
playing “a significant role in setting the stage for the
military coup of 11 September 1973,” and continued to secretly
funnel money to the Edwards group so that El Mercurio could “present
the Junta in the most positive light for the Chilean public.”

During
his lengthy conversation with CIA Director Helms and one of his top
aides, Kenneth Millian, Edwards not only pushed for a U.S.-backed,
preemptive, coup to block the inauguration of the duly elected next
president of Chile, Salvador Allende; he also provided detailed
intelligence on potential coup plotters in the Chilean armed forces
and discussed “timing for
possible military action.” According to the CIA memorandum
of conversation with Edwards, titled “Discussion of Chilean
Political Situation,” they systematically reviewed the strength
and coup potential of each branch of the military.

After
the meeting with the CIA director, Edwards stayed in Washington for
a number of days to continue to share more detailed information with
agency officials as the CIA mobilized to implement President Nixon’s
orders to orchestrate a coup. On September 18, Helms reported to
Kissinger that “Further conversations and a more exhaustive
debriefing are going on with Mr. Edwards right now.”

Henry
Kissinger, according to declassified transcripts of his telephone
calls, attempted to arranged an ultra-secret meeting between Edwards
and President Nixon. On the evening of September 14, 1970, Kissinger
called Nixon’s scheduler, Stephen Bull, and requested that Edwards
quietly be ushered into the Oval Office before a meeting Nixon had
scheduled the next morning with the deputy chairman of the German
Christian Democratic Union party, Gerhard Schroeder. “Does
Edwards need more than 15 minutes?” Bull asked. “Absolutely
not,” Kissinger replied. “We will schedule you from 9:15
to 10:00,” Bull stated. “In that 45 min[ute] period we
will do Edwards at the beginning and then bring in Schroeder.”
Kissinger asked for the Schroeder meeting to start at 9:45. To keep
the Nixon-Edwards meeting secret, Kissinger then instructed Bull:
“don’t let [Edwards and Schroeder] meet. Get Edwards out.”

President
Nixon personally authorized over $1 million dollars in September
1971 “to keep the paper [El Mercurio] going.” (The initial
funding amounted to the considerable sum of 67 million escudos.) CIA
and White House documents show that the Edwards media group received
almost $2 million in covert CIA funds between the fall 1971 and May
1972. The money was used to pay El Mercurio’s bills and debts, and
cover the “monthly operating deficits” in order to assist
opposition forces—El Mercurio “does help give heart to the
opposition forces,” states a memo to Henry Kissinger—and to
provide positive media coverage for the anti-Allende candidates in
the March 1973 Congressional elections. In addition, CIA records
reveal that the Edwards Group received secret funds from the ITT
corporation in $100,000 increments through a Swiss bank account.

In May
1973, the CIA Station in Santiago identified “the El Mercurio
chain of newspapers” as among “the most militant parts of the
opposition” which “have set as their objective the creation of
conflict and confrontation which will lead to some sort of military
intervention.” The secret CIA cable continued: “Each [militant
part] in its own way is trying to coordinate its efforts with
members of the armed forces known to them who share this objective.”
The CIA credited its “propaganda project” in which El Mercurio
and the Edwards media outlets where the key actors, as having
“played a significant role in setting the stage for the military
coup of 11 September 1973.” According to a secret CIA post-coup
report, “Prior to the coup the project’s media outlets
maintained a steady barrage of anti-government criticism, exploiting
every possible point of friction between the government and the
democratic opposition, and emphasizing the problems and conflicts
which were developing between the government and the armed forces.”

After
the coup, El Mercurio continued to receive covert CIA funding until
June 1974. The CIA determined the funds were needed to assist the
newspaper’s effort to help the Pinochet regime consolidate its
power. “Since the coup, these media outlets have supported the new
military government. They have tried to present the Junta in the
most positive light for the Chilean public,” according to a CIA
request for continuing covert monies for El Mercurio. “The project
is essential in enabling the [CIA] Station to help mold Chilean
public opinion in support of the new government….”

29 April, 2017

In an exclusive interview for
teleSUR, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, claimed that the
United States and its allies obstructed an investigation by the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on
chemical attacks in Syria. As he said:

We
have asked the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW) to send specialized missions to investigate what happened. And
every time, the United States obstructed these investigations or
prevented sending such missions in order to carry out such
investigations. This is what happened last week when we called for
investigations over the alleged use of chemical weapons in the town
of Khan Sheikhoun. The United States and its allies prevented OPCW
from taking that decision. As far as we are concerned, we still
insist on an investigation, and we and our Russian and Iranian allies
are trying to persuade OPCW to send a team to investigate what
happened, because if it doesn’t, the United States might repeat the
same charade by fabricating the use of false chemical weapons in
another place in Syria in order to justify military intervention in
support of the terrorists. On the other hand, we continue to fight
the terrorists, because we know that the objective of all these
American and Western allegations concerning chemical weapons is to
support terrorists in Syria. That’s why we will continue to fight
these terrorists.

When asked about US claims that
the Syrian government is the one who used chemical weapons, he
referred to the lies about Saddam Hussein having chemical, nuclear,
and other weapons that led to the US invasion in Iraq:

Colin
Powell [in 2003] showed the world in the United Nations what he
claimed to be the evidence which proves that President Saddam Hussein
possessed chemical, nuclear, and other weapons. However, when the
American forces invaded Iraq, it was proven that all he said was a
lie. Powell himself admitted that the American intelligence agencies
deceived him with that false evidence. That wasn’t the first nor
will it be the last time.

He
also spoke about Israel's double role against Syria:

...
first, by direct aggression, particularly by using
warplanes, artillery, or missiles against Syrian Army positions.
Second, it is supporting terrorists in two ways: first by providing
direct support in the form of weapons, and second by providing
logistic support, i.e. allowing them to conduct military exercises in
the areas it controls. It also provides them with medical assistance
in its hospitals. These are not mere claims or assumptions. They are
facts, verified and published on the internet which you can easily
access as proven evidence of the Israeli role in support of the
terrorists in Syria.

He
claimed that Trump is essentially another puppet of the US deep
state:

The
American President has no policies. There are policies drawn by the
American institutions which control the American regime which are the
intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the big arms and oil companies,
and financial institutions, in addition to some other lobbies which
influence American decision-making. The American President merely
implements these policies, and the evidence is that when Trump tried
to move on a different track, during and after his election campaign,
he couldn’t. He came under a ferocious attack. As we have seen in
the past few week, he changed his rhetoric completely and subjected
himself to the terms of the deep American state, or the deep American
regime. That’s why it is unrealistic and a complete waste of time
to make an assessment of the American President’s foreign policy,
for he might say something; but he ultimately does what these
institutions dictate to him. This is not new. This has been ongoing
American policy for decades.

He also referred to the term
"moderate rebels" that the media in the West are using for
various terrorist groups. As he explained:

[For
the Western and American media] a moderate terrorist is that who
carries out acts of beheading and slaughter but without carrying
al-Qaeda flag, or without saying “Allah Akbar,” while an
extremist terrorist is that who carries the flag and says Allah Akbar
when carrying out acts of beheading and slaughter. This is the only
difference. For the United States, all those who serve its political
agenda against other states are classified as moderate opposition and
not as extremist and terrorist, even if they commit the worst acts of
terrorism.

Since Thursday, students and youth
in Paris, Rennes, Nantes, Toulouse and other cities across France
have held rallies and marched through the city streets. The protests
were against the right wing nationalist Marine Le Pen and the liberal
Emmanuel Macron who are facing off in the in the second round of the
presidential election.

In total, more than 3,000 high
school students took to the streets carrying signs exclaiming:
“Neither the banker, nor the racist!” and “The real
anti-establishment, that is us!” Political slogans could be heard
through the streets as students chanted “It is not the immigrants
who should be expelled, it is Marine Le Pen!”, "Macron, Le
Pen, we do not want them!”, “Their elections, our future!"

During many of the protests, the
youth were met by armoured police blocking the marches and dispersing
tear gas canisters into the crowds, while surveillance helicopters
could be seen in the sky above. One police officer in Rennes even
resorted to drawing his pistol and for a brief moment aiming it at
the protesters.

In Paris, gathering at Place de la
Republique the protest moved towards Boulevard Beaumarchais, where
the tension rose between police and students. Anouk, a 16 year-old
Parisian student from Lycée Buffon explains how the protests were
organised as a peaceful sit-in by high school students from all over
Paris. She said: "We disagree with the values put forward by
the National Front, and since we do not have the right to vote, we
have to express ourselves differently”.

In Lyons the protests escalated as
well. Students hung banners on the gates of the town hall, where one
read: "By my acts I vote 365 days a year. You who come out only
2 Sundays every 5 years, just vote as you see fit.” At the end of
the rally, demonstrators left the Place des Terreaux shouting “down
with capitalism”. A group of youths then wanted to cross one of the
city-bridges to join the protest on the other side of the river, but
were arrested by the police who fired tear gas at them.

The protests across France come
after years of political frustration among youths and workers.
Current president François Hollande and the French Socialist Party
have, despite their promises, implemented countless austerity
policies and allowed companies to cut workers' salaries. Meanwhile,
youth unemployment still stands at 24.6%. For this, Hollande and the
Socialist Party have paid the price, with the party in a deep crisis
and their candidate, Benoît Hamon, securing only 6.4% of the votes
in Sunday’s first round election. As the last part of the
presidential race now pits a racist right-winger against an
ex-banker, the frustration among those who face tough conditions
continues to increase.

With left-wing candidate Jean-Luc
Mélenchon out of the presidential race, the workers and youth of
France only have more capitalist policies of austerity and attacks on
living conditions to look forward to. The crisis of French capitalism
has, like in many other European countries, expressed itself through
a massive political polarisation to the left and to the right. The
traditional parties of the establishment, which the ruling class have
relied upon for decades, are all in deep crises of legitimacy. The
rise of Le Pen to the right and Melenchon to the left is an
indication of this process. But the recent protests indicate that a
layer amongst the youth are drawing even more radical conclusions.
Many of these young people see the crises facing society not only as
a result of poor political decision-making, but as a result of the
capitalist system. They see no future within the confines of this
system and correctly distrust all representatives of the ruling
class.

Protests like the ones across
France this week show just how fed up many students and workers are
with austerity, lies upon lies from politicians and the capitalist
system in general. Mélenchon’s massive success, where 30% of
voters aged 18 to 24 voted in favor of his movement, is a sign of the
potential for radical movements in the next period. The youth who
took to the streets this week are reflecting the brewing mood under
the surface, and anticipating future developments within the wider
youth and the working class. There are undoubtedly more protests on
the way and for the workers and youth of France it will only become
clearer that the problems facing France, Europe and the entire world
cannot be solved within the limits of capitalism. The only solution,
as many young people are realising, is “Neither the banker, nor the
racist!” but to break with the capitalist system and expropriate
the means of production to create a truly fair society.

Trump
"changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself to the
terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime,"
Assad said

Part
2 - Chemical Weapons

The attack
on the airbase came days after the April 4 attack in Khan Sheikhoun,
in which 58 people were killed by what experts consider to be
exposure to sarin. Syrian opposition groups, the United States and
allies including France have blamed Syria's government, while
Damascus has said that armed opposition groups and their sponsors are
to blame.

According to
Assad, however, his government has asked for independent
investigations into the chemical weapons allegations, which he says
have been stalled by the U.S. government and its allies.

"We
have asked the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
to send specialized missions to investigate what happened. And every
time, the United States obstructed these investigations or prevented
sending such missions in order to carry out such investigations,"
Assad said. "This is what happened last week when we called
for investigations over the alleged use of chemical weapons in the
town of Khan Sheikhoun. The United States and its allies prevented
OPCW from taking that decision."

Assad
alleges that U.S. officials are lying about their claims regarding
Syria having chemical weapons, and recalled Colin Powell's infamous
testimony at the United Nations in 2003 where he said that Iraq was
in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

"This
is what characterizes American politicians: they lie on a daily basis
... That’s why we shouldn’t believe what the Pentagon or any
other American institution says because they say things which serve
their policies, not things which reflect reality and the facts on the
ground."

Throughout
the bloody civil war which has claimed the lives of hundreds of
thousands, there have been a number of chemical attacks confirmed by
the U.N. and other experts. The responsibility in some of the cases —
including that of the attack in Khan Sheikhoun — has remained
inconclusive.

Today, April
28th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the documentation and source code for
CIA's "Scribbles" project, a document-watermarking
preprocessing system to embed "Web beacon"-style tags into
documents that are likely to be copied by Insiders, Whistleblowers,
Journalists or others. The released version (v1.0 RC1) is dated
March, 1st 2016 and classified SECRET//ORCON/NOFORN until 2066.

Scribbles is
intended for off-line preprocessing of Microsoft Office documents.
For reasons of operational security the user guide demands that
"[t]he Scribbles executable, parameter files, receipts and
log files should not be installed on a target machine, nor left in a
location where it might be collected by an adversary."

According to
the documentation, "the Scribbles document watermarking tool
has been successfully tested on [...] Microsoft Office 2013 (on
Windows 8.1 x64), documents from Office versions 97-2016 (Office 95
documents will not work!) [and d]ocuments that are not be locked
forms, encrypted, or password-protected". But this
limitation to Microsoft Office documents seems to create problems:
"If the targeted end-user opens them up in a different
application, such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice, the watermark images
and URLs may be visible to the end-user. For this reason, always make
sure that the host names and URL components are logically consistent
with the original content. If you are concerned that the targeted
end-user may open these documents in a non-Microsoft Office
application, please take some test documents and evaluate them in the
likely application before deploying them."

Security
researches and forensic experts will find more detailed information
on how watermarks are applied to documents in the source code, which
is included in this publication as a zipped archive.

28 April, 2017

Ten
years ago, Chiquita Brands International became the first U.S.-based
corporation convicted of violating a U.S. law against funding an
international terrorist group—the paramilitary United Self-defense
Forces of Colombia* (AUC). But punishment for the crime was reserved
only for the corporate entity, while the names of the individual
company officials who engineered the payments have since remained
hidden behind a wall of impunity.

As
Colombian authorities now prepare to prosecute business executives
for funding groups responsible for major atrocities during Colombia’s
decades-old conflict, a new set of Chiquita Papers, made possible
through the National Security Archive’s FOIA lawsuit, has for the
first time made it possible to know the identities and understand the
roles of the individual Chiquita executives who approved and oversaw
years of payments to groups responsible for countless human rights
violations in Colombia.

National
Security Archive

Key
points:

In
secret testimony on January 6, 2000 Robert F. Kistinger, head of
Chiquita’s Banana Group based in Cincinnati, Ohio, told the SEC
[Securities and Exchange Commission] he had direct knowledge about
many of the payments to armed groups, especially when they began in
the late 1980s, but claimed that he had become less and less
involved with the specifics over time. In his view, the amounts of
money paid to the groups—hundreds of thousands of dollars per
year—were simply not large enough to affect the company’s bottom
line.

The
secret, sworn statements from the SEC probe are the de facto oral
history of Chiquita’s ties to terrorist groups in Colombia—a
unique and damning firsthand account of how one multinational
corporation developed and routinized a system of secret transactions
with actors on all sides of the conflict in order to maintain normal
business operations—even thrive—in one of the most conflictive
regions of the world, all the while treating the payments as little
more than the “cost of doing business in Colombia.”

The AUC
was a loose federation of rightist militants and drug traffickers
responsible for a terrible legacy of violent acts in Colombia going
back to the 1980s. Chiquita began to pay the AUC sometime in
1996-1997, just as the group launched a nationwide campaign of
assassinations and massacres aimed at unionists, political
activists, public officials and other perceived guerrilla
supporters, often working with the collaboration or complicity of
Colombian security forces. Over the next several years, the AUC
dramatically increased its numbers and firepower, raised its
political profile, infiltrated Colombian institutions, drove
thousands of Colombians from their homes, and for the first time
challenged guerrilla groups for control of strategic areas around
the country. Chiquita agreed to pay a relatively modest $25 million
fine as part of its deal with the DOJ [U.S. Department of Justice],
but not a single company executive has ever been held responsible
for bankrolling the AUC’s wave of terror. Nor have any Chiquita
officials faced justice for millions more in outlays to the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National
Liberation Army (ELN), the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), and
practically every other violent actor in the region.

Efforts
to hold individual Chiquita executives accountable for financing the
groups are complicated by a deliberate decision on the part of the
U.S. Justice Department to withhold the names of the people behind
the payments scheme. At the September 2007 sentencing hearing in the
terror payments case, U.S. government attorneys specifically argued
against the public identification of the Chiquita officials “to
protect the reputational and privacy interests of uncharged
individuals.”

The key
that unlocks many of the mysteries of the Chiquita Papers is the
secret testimony given by Kistinger and six other Chiquita officials
during the SEC’s expansive bribery investigation. Through a
relatively simple, if laborious, process of cross-referencing among
the three sources, it is possible to identify almost all of the
individuals whose names were scrubbed from the Factual Proffer, the
SLC [Chiquita’s Special Litigation Committee] Report, and the SEC
testimony—effectively stripping away the redactions that have
shielded Chiquita personnel from scrutiny and that have helped
guarantee impunity for individuals linked to the payments.

As the
most thoroughly-documented case study on the role of multinational
corporations in Colombia’s conflict, the new set of Chiquita
Papers should factor into the forthcoming investigations of
transitional justice authorities created by the recent peace accord
with the FARC. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) will
prosecute the most serious crimes committed during the conflict,
while the recently-approved Colombian Truth Commission is an
extrajudicial body established to provide clarification about the
worst abuses of the conflict and to explain the phenomena that
perpetuated the longest continuous war in the world.

Buried
inside nearly 400 pages of SEC testimony are many of the clues
needed to learn the identities of executives and managers at
Chiquita who authorized and carried out the “sensitive payments”
program but whose names Chiquita, the DOJ, and the SEC tried to hide
from public view.

To
Ordman [former Senior Vice President of European Banana Sourcing for
the Chiquita Fresh Group] and Kistinger, who were based outside of
the Colombian “war zone,” payments to insurgents and death
squads, alarming at first, soon became business as usual—the price
to be paid for access to the rich plantations of Colombia’s
violently-contested Atlantic coast. In their SEC statements, both
describe a process of becoming comfortable with the legal
justifications in place and the specific procedures the company had
established to handle the payments. Kistinger said he viewed the
payments as a “normal expenditure,” not unlike the purchase of
fertilizers or agrichemicals—“an ongoing cost” of the
company’s business operations.

The SEC
transcripts reveal that Chiquita’s Colombia-based staff were less
comfortable with the payments than their bosses in Costa Rica and
Cincinnati, and that at least one employee openly questioned whether
the company had moved beyond protection payments and was willingly
funding the operations of violent groups.

*The
United Self-Defenders of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia,
or AUC, in Spanish) was a Colombian paramilitary and drug trafficking
group which was an active belligerent in the Colombian armed conflict
during the period from 1997 to 2006. The AUC was responsible for
attacks against the FARC and ELN rebel groups as well as numerous
attacks against civilians beginning in 1997 with the Mapiripán
Massacre.

The
militia had its roots in the 1980s when militias were established by
drug lords to combat rebel kidnappings and extortion. In April 1997
the AUC was formed through a merger, orchestrated by the ACCU, of
local right-wing militias, each intending to protect different local
economic, social and political interests by fighting left-wing
insurgents in their areas.

The
organization was initially led by Carlos Castaño until his murder in
2004 and the organization was believed to have links to some local
military commanders in the Colombian Armed Forces. Amnesty
International calls the paramilitarys groups army of Colombia's
Auxiliary forces and Human Rights Watch the sixth division.

The AUC
had about 20,000 members and was heavily financed through the drug
trade and through support from local landowners, cattle ranchers,
mining or petroleum companies and politicians.

The
Colombian military has been accused of delegating to AUC
paramilitaries the task of murdering peasants and labor union
leaders, amongst others suspected of supporting the rebel movements
and the AUC publicly and explicitly singled out 'political and trade
union operatives of the extreme left' as legitimate targets. The AUC
was designated as a terrorist organization by many countries and
organizations, including the United States, Canada and the European
Union.

Trump
"changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself to the
terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime,"
Assad said

Part
1

"Yes,
from a Western perspective, you are now sitting with the devil. This
is how they market it in the west," Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad told teleSUR's Rolando Segura in an exclusive interview from
Damascus, addressing a range of subjects including claims of chemical
attacks as well as the shifting geopolitical alignments impacting the
war which has ravaged his country.

Speaking on
the subject of Donald Trump, the Syrian leader said the U.S.
president "has no policies," but is rather
implementing decisions made by "the intelligence agencies,
the Pentagon, the big arms manufacturers, oil companies, and
financial institutions."

"As
we have seen in the past few weeks, he changed his rhetoric
completely and subjected himself to the terms of the deep American
state, or the deep American regime," Assad said.

Despite
running on a platform promising a departure from the interventionist
foreign policy of predecessor Barack Obama, Trump launched 59
tomahawk missiles on the al-Shariat air base in Homs on April 6 in
response to allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian
government — claims which Syria's leader denies.

"That’s
why it is unrealistic and a complete waste of time to make an
assessment of the American president’s foreign policy, for he might
say something; but he ultimately does what these institutions dictate
to him. This is not new. This has been ongoing American policy for
decades."

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez
said her country's decision was based on dignity and sovereignty

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy
Rodriguez presented the official letter Thursday to start the process
for the country to pull out of the Organization of American States,
which she said was attempting to intervene and promote a coup in
Venezuela.

"Today we formalize and
present the letter to definitely pull out of this organization,"
said Rodriguez in a press conference from the Foreign Ministry's
office in Caracas. "We will defend the self-determination of
our people."

Rodriguez said the move was based
on a question of dignity and that President Nicolas Maduro's
decision, which was taken to defend Venezuela from arbitrary abuses
and illegal actions carried out by the OAS against the country, had
been both praised and respected.

"Today is a day of victory
for Venezuela, we woke up today freer and more independent,"
the foreign minister continued.

Rodriguez criticized OAS
Secretary-General Luis Almagro, accusing him of responding to U.S.
interests to destabilize Caracas, adding that the organization has a
historical precedent of promoting interventions, coups and invasions
in the region.

Almagro has repeatedly called for
the Democratic Charter to be applied against Venezuela, which would
have lead to its suspension from the organization.

"When I wake up in the
morning, I am happy to say I do not have to call Washington to tell
me what to do," she said, referring not only to Almagro, but
also other foreign ministers in the region who supported him in
promoting actions against Venezuela.

Rodriguez slammed the organization
for its hypocrisy of constantly criticizing the political and
economic crisis in Venezuela while turning a blind eye to human
rights abuses in other countries.

Article 143 of the OAS Charter
states that any member state can choose to leave the group by means
of a written communication to the secretary-general and after two
years from the date on which the general secretary receives the
notification, the state shall be removed from the organization.

Venezuela's decision comes after
the OAS's Permanent Council agreed Wednesday to convene a meeting of
foreign ministers to discuss Venezuela, with 19 votes in favor, 10
against, one abstention and one absence.

The Community of Latin American
and Caribbean States, known by its Spanish acronym CELAC, will meet
May 2 at Caracas' request to address "threats against the
constitutional order in Venezuela, as well as the interventionist
actions undermining its independence, sovereignty and its right to
self-determination," said Rodriguez.

U.S. President Donald Trump
unveiled his tax platform on Wednesday, and one thing is clear: the
rich will get richer.

In a White House briefing,
National Economic Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin announced Trump's plan, which will drastically cut the U.S.
corporate tax rate to one of the lowest among the world's developed
economies from 35 percent to 15 percent.

"Welcome to Goldman Sachs
populism!" said Public Citizen president Robert Weissman.
"The Goldman Sachs tax plan will slash taxes on giant
corporations and the corporate elite. With the elimination of the
alternative minimum and estate taxes, it not so incidentally appears
to confer huge benefits on President Trump himself — though of
course, we can’t know for sure so as long as Trump’s tax returns
remain secret."

The proposal aims to reduce the
individual income rates and reduce brackets from seven to three,
pegged at 10, 25 and 35 percent. The so-called “death tax” for
inheritance will also be scrapped under the proposal.

US President Trump has given the
Pentagon authority to independently set troop levels in Iraq and
Syria, and to ensure commanders’ flexibility. Over 5,000 troops are
deployed in Iraq, and 500 in Syria, where they operate without
Damascus’ invitation.

“The President has delegated
the authority for Force Management Levels (FML) for Iraq and Syria to
the [Defense] Secretary [James Mattis],” said Captain Jeff
Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, as cited by ABC.

He also said that no change has
been made at this stage to the number of US troops in the Middle
East, adding that the current military strategy involves rendering
support to local militias fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly
ISIS/ISIL).

The move does not mean that the
numbers of troops in Iraq and Syria will change “nor does it
change the process by which we will manage those forces,” said
Davis.

Venezuelan women's movements are
taking to the streets of Caracas on Thursday to show their support of
peace and the country’s Bolivarian Revolution amid ongoing internal
and outside imperialist threats against the socialist government.

As part of the “Great
Mobilization for the Defense of the Motherland/Fatherland, Peace and
Life,” a number of women's organizations marched from the Plaza
Bolivar to Plaza Bicentenaria outside the presidential palace in the
center of the capital.

The women's groups are
particularly are concerned about the recent attacks and deaths as a
result of ongoing opposition protests intent on removing President
Nicolas Maduro from power and plans by opposition politicians to
overthrow the government.

“The message that we send to
all the people of Venezuela today is the call to peace, coexistence
and unification of all the people and reject all those who want to
harm our country,” said Ingrid Espinoza from the National Union
of Women. Many women, old and young were seen dressed in red and
holding banners of their social organizations.

As Colombia’s largest rebel army
demobilizes, preparing to lay down its arms once and for all to
transition to civilian life after more than half a century of civil
war, two FARC members have been assassinated in less than 10 days as
rebel leaders and social organizations continue to ring alarm over
the ongoing crisis of paramilitary violence that threatens to
undermine the historic peace process in the South American country.

FARC Commander Jose Huber Yatacue
was shot dead Tuesday outside a hospital in Toribio, a town in the
southwestern department of Cauca, one of the regions hardest hit by
the decades-long internal armed conflict and ongoing paramilitary
violence.

Just over a week earlier, FARC
member Alvaro Ortiz Cabezas was murdered on April 16 in a bar in a
rural area of the port city of Tumaco, located in the northwestern
coastal department of Nariño, bordering Ecuador.

Both Yatacue and Ortiz had
benefited from the amnesty law, passed as part of the historic peace
deal signed last year by the FARC and the Colombian government, that
pardons rebels for political crimes committed in the context of the
armed conflict. Both were reportedly more involved in the FARC’s
urban activities than rural operations and both were killed in areas
outside the designated transition zones where the rebel army has
gathered to demobilize.

Argentine President Mauricio Macri
met with U.S. President Donal Trump at the White House Thursday to
discuss business ties, after decades of knowing each other through
business deals as real estate moguls in their respective countries.

Thursday's talks marked the first
meeting between the two presidents and the second time a Latin
American head of state met Trump, after Peruvian President Pedro
Pablo Kuczynski did so two months ago.

"My good friend, for many,
many years," said Trump of Macri. "Long time, 25
years." Macri jumped in and corrected Trump: "More,
unfortunately, more, I was only 24," said the Argentine
president, who is now 58 years old.

When asked by a reporter of the
recent export restriction from the U.S. to lemons from Argentina,
Trump said, "I know about all the lemons. And believe it or
not, the lemon business is a big, big business."

"But we are going to give
that very serious consideration," the U.S. president
continued. "One of the reasons he’s here is about lemons —
and I’ll tell him about North Korea, and he’ll tell me about
lemons. I think that we’re going to be very favorably disposed.
We’re going to be talking."

Trump said he knew Macri from
before both entered politics in their respective countries due to
real estate deals and reiterated the many years of friendship with
the Argentine president.

A Chilean court has found a
retired army general and 15 other former military officials guilty of
the murders of more than a dozen opponents the General Augusto
Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1970s, when they acted as operatives
of the military regime's notorious death squad, the Caravan of Death.

The officers were charged with 15
murders in 1973 through the Caravan of Death — a covert military
unit that waged terror in the country under the dictatorship,
including torturing and killing civilians — reported human rights
special prosecutor Mario Carroza.

The 15 victims, all political
opponents of the Pinochet regime, were detained on Oct. 16, 1973 in
the wake of the Sept. 11 military coup against socialist President
Salvador Allende. They were later removed from their prison cells and
executed by multiple shots inside the military detention center where
they were being held. Their remains were buried in a mass graves and
were not returned to their relatives until they were found in 1998.

Among the 16 former military
officials charged is a former army commander-in-chief, retired
General Juan Emilio Cheyre, who has long been considered
"untouchable" after previously being sentenced but securing
his release on bond.

A Spanish left-wing party on
Thursday said it was preparing a no-confidence motion against the
current prime minister and requested that the other opposition
parties back the initiative.

Pablo Iglesias, the head of
Podemos, said in a press conference that the ruling conservative
Popular Party, led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, was exhibiting
"parasitic" behavior in public institutions and removing it
from the government had become a civic and "ethical obligation."

"The corruption of the PP is
not a storm (that will pass), it is a virus that infects the
institutions of our country," Iglesias said. He added that the
move responded to a growing demand in Spanish society and had to do
with the "health of democracy" beyond party lines.

The move came after Rajoy was
summoned by Spain’s national court last Tuesday to testify as a
witness in a major corruption trial. It was the first time in Spain’s
modern history that a sitting prime minister was asked to take to the
stand in such a way.

27 April, 2017

For my
entire life, I watched the corporate media sell us war after war,
always telling us who our enemies are. Which countries need saving.
And which governments should be overthrown.

And every
single time it turns out they lied. All the interventions did was
ruin entire nations along with millions of lives.

As I watched
the mass media's coverage of Venezuela today, coupled with covert
regime-change operations and overt threats of intervention from the
Trump regime, I say in a clear voice that we don't believe you
anymore.

And the only
just stand the US government can take, is keeping their hands off of
Venezuela.